Chuck Darwin<p>In recent years, U.S. Supreme Court decisions have undercut federal agencies’ ability to curb pollution and fight climate change. </p><p>Several cases decided in 2024 continued this trend, <br>systematically shifting the power to make and enforce environmental regulations over to the judicial branch.</p><p>Though it will likely take years to know the full consequences of this year’s rulings, <br>legal experts say they have profound implications as to how federal agencies can respond to the threat of climate change. <br>Congress passed the majority of the laws that protect our lands and waters decades ago, <br>and with an increasingly polarized political environment, legislators have passed few new environmental regulations since. <br>In the past few decades, Congress has in effect tasked federal agencies with adapting existing laws to our new climate reality, <br>said Chris Winter, executive director of the University of Colorado Law School’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment. </p><p>But with an increasingly conservative Supreme Court in place, these laws have come under increased scrutiny, <br>including in several of the court’s 2024 landmark decisions.<br>Perhaps the most significant was <a href="https://c.im/tags/Loper" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Loper</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Bright" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Bright</span></a> Enterprises v. Raimondo, <br>which overturned the 1984 <a href="https://c.im/tags/Chevron" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Chevron</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/doctrine" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>doctrine</span></a>, a powerful legal tool that gave federal agencies the ability to interpret and enforce ambiguous or unclear laws. <br>For decades, the courts have largely deferred to agency experts in crafting and enforcing regulations, <br>since those agencies typically have greater expertise in their subject areas than judges do. <br>By eliminating Chevron, the court transferred the authority to clarify the meaning of a written law to the judicial system.</p><p>Loper Bright has already raised “a lot of uncertainty” about whether or how agencies should create and enforce environmental regulations, <br>according to Winter. </p><p>The last few years have signaled a structural change in the balance of power between courts and federal agencies, he said, <br>with courts now working hard to rein in federal regulators.</p><p>Meanwhile, industry groups eager to roll back regulations have filed lawsuits in conservative states with business-friendly judges. </p><p>In federal courts in Wyoming, Utah and Montana, for example, <br>groups representing farmers, ranchers and the fossil fuel industry have cited Loper Bright as a precedent for suing the Biden administration to overturn the 2024 <a href="https://c.im/tags/Public" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Public</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Lands" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Lands</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rule" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Rule</span></a>, <br>which designated conservation as a legitimate “use” for public lands in line with extractive uses like mining, grazing and logging. </p><p>As of Sept. 6, Loper Bright has been cited in 110 federal cases, according to the advocacy group Democracy Forward. </p><p>“These days, it doesn’t feel like you can really think deeply about the law. It is simply a political battle,” <br>said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, <br>a nonprofit public-interest environmental law firm. </p><p>Altogether, the body of law emerging from the court has “prioritized politically oriented property rights and economic rights,” <br>Schlenker-Goodrich said.<br> “In other words, corporate rights and corporate power.”</p><p><a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/the-supreme-court-decisions-that-gutted-environmental-protections-in-2024/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">hcn.org/articles/the-supreme-c</span><span class="invisible">ourt-decisions-that-gutted-environmental-protections-in-2024/</span></a></p>